An open letter to the ‘New York Times’
The ‘New York Times’ reporting by Adam Nagourney, Mitch Smith and Quentin Hardy, June 16, 2015 on the death of Irish students in Berkeley is nothing short of disgraceful.
To be so obtuse and insensitive to people who at this time are struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of their loved ones, has damaged the brand of the ‘ New York Times’ internationally.
More often perceived as a beacon of objectivity and high standards in journalism, the ‘ New York Times’ has been reduced to gutter tabloid status in the eyes of anybody with a sense of compassion who read the piece in question.
The cheap attempt to seize upon the tragic deaths of six young people in a terrible accident, and turn your reporting of this into a vehicle to criticise Irish J1 students specifically, and to denounce their behaviour as a whole, is nothing short of xenophobic and a pathetic attempt to delineate thousands of people into a stereotypical caricature.
If some of your journalists and editors believe that J1 students’ journeys from Ireland to the US are to be ridiculed, it was not the time to link this small-minded belief to a report on the death of young people, whose families and loved ones are suffering enough right now, without insinuations from global media moguls that the students’ own behaviour and nationality was a decisive factor in their deaths.
If it was six US students who had died while on ‘Spring Break’ in Cancun, I wonder if their nationality would have been a negative consideration in your reporting, or “an embarrassment” to the United States of America, as you have said J1 students’ behaviour is to Ireland.
Unlike your staff, who were involved in producing this article, I will not hold the ‘ New York Times’ in its entirety responsible for this tactless, stony piece.
I am sure there are good, compassionate and mindful people working for your organisation.
To bestow upon them all the same crass values would be very small-minded and unfair after all, wouldn’t it? Edwin Ambrose Limerick